Speakers that sound great in terrible rooms

Hey @bob540

Here's what I suggest.  Put your speakers 3' in front of you and listen to music.

The difference between that and what you hear at your chair is how good room acoustics can improve the sound.

If your speakers are too big, or you lack the space, pull up a chair near one. Listen to the detail and depth you can hear.

Interesting thread. I would say that there are basically two ways to deal with a problematic room (but aren't they all problematic, to some degree?). First is by passive or active treatment. The former is classic room treatments, as little or as much as is needed. The second are active crossover networks and/or DSP, which includes source-based correction such as Dirac and others.

Second, you can minimize speaker/room interactions by using speakers with omnidirectional or dipolar designs. These may not overcome all the problems with your room but there are other advantages to these designs; namely soundstage and imaging. mapman mentioned Ohm Walsh speakers and alymere mentioned Linkwitz, both good solutions. I sold the Larsen line for several years and setup several pairs in absolutely dreadful rooms, mostly to the satisfaction of the buyer.

Myself, I have happily rediscovered Shahinian's great Obelisk speakers for my difficult living room and I love them, although they did necessitate a change from tube amplification to SS. But they do sound great!

Omni speakers have been mentioned several times, and there is definitely something they do right which contributes to dealing with terrible rooms: Their off-axis response has the same spectral balance as their on-axis response. Thus their reverberant sound is virtually identical to their direct sound, modifed by the room’s acoustics of course.

Now I’m going to make a claim that will probably be somewhat controversial: In MANY cases, "terrible room" is actually a speaker design issue, but it gets blamed on the room! You see, if the room was the root cause of the problem, omnis would be the WORST speakers for such rooms because they send the most energy out into the room for the room to screw up. But here in this thread we have many people who are experienced with omnis and quasi-omnis telling us the exact opposite!

What many speaker do WRONG over most of the spectrum, relative to omnis (and quasi-omnis like the Shaninians and Larsens and many dipoles) is, their off-axis response is significantly dissimilar to their on-axis response. When the ["terrible"] room reflects back a lot this spectrally incorrect off-axis energy, what we perceive is a weighted average of the direct and reverberant sound, and we make the mistake of blaming it all on the room.

(Now there definitely are room problems which clearly exist, such as too much or too little boundary reinforcement, strong bass modes, excessive asymmetry, too much or too little damping, slap-echo, and insufficient size. Speaker design can only go so far in addressing these issues.)

The fact that omnis sound good in many "terrible" rooms is imo proof that, in THOSE rooms anyway, the issue was not the room itself.

A thought experiment comes to mind: How would an unamplified acoustic guitar sound in the room? If it would suck (like due to excess slap-echo), then the room really is terrible. But if it would sound good, then the room may not be the root problem.

Based on my own experiments omnidirectional is not my radiation pattern of choice because I have concluded that less off-axis energy is actually preferable. That being said, the success of omnis (particularly in "terrible" rooms) clearly tells us what the spectral balance of the off-axis energy should be: The same as the on-axis energy.

Duke

Good points by Duke.

I have honestly been of the opinion since my first encounters with Ohm Walsh speakers many years ago that more omnidirectional speakers do things right and others are inherently flawed in design.

Omnis radiate sound in a pattern more like if a real instrument were playing, whereas conventional more directional designs shoot all the good sound mostly forward in one direction only.

The pain people must go through to try and get directional speakers to sound good supports that the approach is inherently flawed.

My big Ohm F5s were hand picked for the troublesome L shaped room they run in. Planar and tower box speakers I tried in there prior just could not cut it at all.

The fact that omnis sound good in many "terrible" rooms is imo proof that, in THOSE rooms anyway, the issue was not the room itself.

Duke,

Having a pro in the thread is like cheating. :)

Can we define good though? I mean, I agree with the on/off axis description, but! What about imaging and detail?

How would omnis compare to dispersion limited speakers like big ESL’s, line arrays or horns with narrow beam pattern?  Pro acousticians I've read say that the better the dispersion control is, the less room treatment is required.

The Omni story flies in the face of this, unless we don't care about detail. (Yes, this is devil's advocacy)

Best,

E